


Take the Long Way Home

by voodoochild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:30:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three FBI agents, one SUV, and a hell of a lot of things unsaid. Maybe taking the long way home wasn't such a good plan after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take the Long Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately post-"Reckoner", in an AU where Rossi, Hotch, and Morgan drove back from Long Island. Title from the Supertramp song, which I just couldn't resist using. Lyrics at the end from Bruce Springsteen's "Further on Up the Road". Written for the Criminal Minds Gen-a-thon, for the prompt: "Hotch/Rossi/Morgan- alpha males stuck in New Jersey, not allowed to pump their own gas".

Dave has decided to blame this all on Hotch and Morgan.

He'd have been fine driving back to DC from Commack by himself. The drive would have cleared his head, let him speed down the Garden State Parkway through Jersey, and it would have been automatic to cut over 195 to Trenton. It was a little late - if he was tired, he could have crashed at Tina's, surprised her and the boys with "Uncle Dave" stories - and taken 95 straight back to DC. Three hours, give or take, and he'd have been back at Quantico.

Instead, he's pretty sure he's stuck in a previously-undiscovered circle of hell; Morgan's blasting the Chili Peppers on full volume and doing _sixty-five_ on the Parkway, Hotch is backseat-driving like there's no tomorrow, and they've both decided to ignore Dave's perfectly sensible, culled-from-years-of-driving-the-route, directions in favor of following the _focacta_ GPS. Which is how they've ended up down in Barnegat, of all places, stopped at a Sunoco station while Hotch asks directions from the teenaged store clerk and Morgan attempts to wrestle the gas hose away from the elderly filler. Dave tried to tell him that you don't pump your own gas in Jersey, but it did about as much good as his driving directions.

Just as well - he needs to talk himself out of strangling Morgan for trying to hang a U-turn in a jughandle. Dave thought he'd forgotten all of Pop's swear words, and he hasn't said an honest Hail Mary since that pregnancy scare with Lisa Nowicki in junior year, but he never, ever wants to drive in Jersey with Derek Morgan again.

Fuckin' out-of-state drivers. Fuckin' Aaron, for insisting Dave needed an escort. That the case got to him. Aaron is the one person who shouldn't be pulling the "you can't take cases personally" card right now.

The door to the SUV slams, and Morgan slides back into the driver's seat, having lost the battle with the station attendant. He starts futzing with the rearview mirror, keeping Hotch and the clearly-unhelpful counter girl in his sights - the way they all have been doing since Foyet dropped Hotch at that ER two months ago.

"Learn your lesson, Derek?" Dave asks, earning himself a glare.

"Shove it, Rossi," Morgan snipes. "What kind of state doesn't let a man pump his own gas?"

"New Jersey, clearly. You've never driven up here."

Morgan stops fiddling with the mirror and starts fiddling with his keys. "Didn't sound like a question."

"It wasn't. I may not have been home in thirty years, but I can still spot an out-of-towner. Philly, New York, and Jersey drivers are a special breed."

"Oh, so that's why you think traffic patterns are a gentle suggestion and hold the Bureau record for speeding tickets?"

Dave has to laugh; it's true. "And those are only the ones where they caught me."

Morgan smiles, then ducks his head in that way he has when he knows you're not going to like what he's going to ask. "Why'd you need out of Long Island so bad? Commack doesn't seem like it's anything to run from."

Dave almost deflects, cracks a joke. The commute to DC was murder. He couldn't find a woman in Long Island he hadn't already hit on. He's too morbid for suburbia, people would think he was a killer himself. There's not room for his ego in Commack. Any one of the thousands of excuses he's given over the years. But he stops - this is Derek asking. One of his team, his family, the people who have his back without question.

And yeah, trust is a two-way street. Morgan was there in Indianapolis for the Galen case, and he was there in New York for the bombings, and he had the guts to come to Dave about Aaron's behavior after Foyet. Maybe he needs to give Derek more reasons to keep coming to him.

"It doesn't, does it? It's nice now, a little gentrified for my taste. Nice and middle-class. It didn't used to look that nice. Shopping malls where factories used to be, coffee shops instead of strip clubs. It's really changed. One thing hasn't, though. The mob's still powerful, still running things. You notice all the cops were either Italian or Irish? All the car dealerships have an owner with a name ending in a vowel and workers with names ending in -ski? That's Commack for you, still stuck in 1948 when it comes to who really has the power."

"That's how you knew Basola was mob. Why you knew Finnegan could find him."

It's not a question, and it's not really about Basola or Ray.

"Ray Finnegan and I were best friends growing up. You have no idea how rare that was in Commack; the micks and the dagos were bitter rivals, never mixed. Ray's father and older brothers were cops. They were upstanding citizens, bright community figures. My dad fixed engines for a living and made a little extra on weekends as a bookie. My older sister was married to one of the biggest mob bosses on the East Coast, dated him since she was a teenager. But Ray and I didn't care about that when we were kids."

Morgan cocks his head. "And that changed when you got older?"

"After high school, Ray and I both joined the Marines. I was fine, did my tours in Japan and Korea, and came back when I was done. Ray couldn't hack it. Did a tour in Singapore and got dishonorably discharged halfway through for conduct unbecoming. He went back to Commack and started working for my brother-in-law. Enforcer work, mostly, made a killing doing it, and when I got back, he tried to recruit me. If I'd stayed? Hell, I might've ended up with a longer rap sheet than Basola."

Dave hasn't told just anyone that, not since Emma. It's just easier to forget that he ever lived in Commack - after Pop died and Mom moved down to Cherry Hill to be near Tina and the boys, it's virtually the truth. Nobody from the Rossi family has been there in years. And on this team, he's hardly the only one avoiding his roots; JJ and Pittsburgh, Garcia and Fresno . . . even Aaron won't go within ten miles of Staunton, except on a case.

A familiar "stop kidding yourself" glare is leveled at him, and Morgan shakes his head. "Can't see you ending up like Basola. You're no killer, Rossi."

That shouldn't be such a compliment, but it is. When you do this job, when you carry a badge and gun, and immerse yourself in the darkest recesses of the human psyche, it's damn easy to fall. Lose yourself in the hunt, or in the darkness.

Maybe Morgan just might trust him after all.

Dave smiles, then notices Aaron exiting the convenience store with three plastic bags of supplies. He hopes Aaron remembered bottled water. He turns to Morgan. "Hey, how about letting me drive for a while? It's been hours since we left Long Island."

"Yeah, okay," Morgan says, climbing over the gear shift and into the backseat. Dave passes him his FBI jacket, which Morgan rolls up and uses as a neck pillow.

Aaron raises an eyebrow when he gets back to the SUV and Dave's in the driver's seat, but he just passes Dave his iced tea and Twizzlers and heads around to sit shotgun. He tosses the second bag to Morgan - energy bars and bottled water - and keeps the third bag for himself as he gets into the SUV. Dave doesn't even need to look to know it's a bottle of Powerade, a couple of Snickers bars, a bag of Fritos, and three cans of Red Bull. Fuckin' Aaron and his crazy metabolism.

"Hotch, man, anyone tell you you eat like a teenager?" Morgan grumbles, tearing open an energy bar.

"You got what you asked for," Aaron says, closing the door. "No one's forcing you to share with me."

The jet is nice - really, really nice, in Dave's opinion, especially since they got the seat-warmers - but there's something about unexpected road trips. Dave pulls out of the gas station, sliding on his sunglasses, and ignores Morgan's subdued panicking as he takes the exit for Route 72. He'll cut over to Camden and across to Philly, screw the GPS.

"Asbury Park or The Rising?" Aaron's got the requisite CDs in his hand. "You know my vote, but I know your rule."

Please, like it's a contest.

"The Rising. Track 9, if you please."

They both pretend not to hear Morgan's coughing fit when Aaron cranks the volume and they both start singing along.

_"So let's take the good times as they go  
And I'll meet you further on up the road . . ."_


End file.
